The Oldest Living Vampire Unleashed

by Joseph Duncan

  And then I saw them!

  My heart broke at the sight of them.

  Eyya.

  Nyala.

  Brulde.

  My mortal lovers. My husband and wives.

  Alive again!

  Whole and unutterably beautiful.

  They danced, eyes closed, heads thrown back in ecstasy, their limbs twining in a way that seemed both impossibly graceful and indescribably erotic. I watched, entranced, as Eyya leapt and fell, hair swirling in a silky black cloud, as Nyala slithered seductively upon Brulde’s sweat-greased thigh, as Brulde laughed and thrust his pelvis at them, buttocks clenching and releasing, the muscles in his broad back rippling, his stiff member bobbing up and down.

  I lost all self-control at the sight of them. Maddened, I clawed my way through the resisting darkness. I meant to join them in that golden light. I would not be denied. I had protected our descendants for thirty thousand years. I had waged wars, destroyed legions of my fellow blood drinkers, to ensure that our descendants would be the masters of the earth. Could I not now give up this interminable vigil? Had I not earned my entry in that glorious light? Could I not now go to my rest?

  And then my father strode into the light.

  He glowered at me sternly.

  “No,” he said.

  5

  That single word froze me in my tracks.

  “No?” I cried. And then I cried it again, my voice sounding childish and petulant, even to myself. “NO?”

  Gan shook his head, arms crossed. “It is not your time,” he said.

  I wanted to howl in frustration. If it had been anyone else, anyone but my father, I might have thrown myself upon him, pushed him aside or fought my way past him. Into the light. Into the arms of my mortal loved ones. But because it was my father, I restrained myself. I swallowed my frustration and said, as calmly as I could manage, “And why must I be denied-- again?”

  This version of my father, this apparition, was much younger than I remembered Gan to be. This was my father in the prime of his life, with a great kinky mane of reddish brown hair, a fresh and unlined face and a taut, impressively muscled body. It was almost comical, seeing him so young. Were it not for my frustration, I might have laughed. His mannerisms were still the same, however, the way he crossed his arms as he stood to block my path, the way he scowled up at me and heaved a rueful sigh.

  “My boy,” he said, shaking his head. “Shirker-of-his-duties, you are still a self-centered whiner.”

  I could not reply to that immediately. I was too flabbergasted. It had always annoyed me that my father could see so easily through my pretensions. All good parents can. Having raised us, they know us more perfectly—both the good and the bad—than any other people in the world. Gan had been dead for thirty thousand years, yet he could still cut me to the bone.

  My mouth flapped soundlessly for a moment, and then I sputtered, “Whiner? Whiner?”

  He set his furry jaw. He would not be disabused of his opinion.

  “Do you know what I have suffered?” I cried. “How long I have waited for this moment?”

  “What really have you suffered?” Gan asked. “You have enjoyed powers unimaginable to most mortal men. You have known pleasures beyond the realm of human understanding. You have lived longer than any other sentient creature on the face of the earth. And yet you are still the vain and impulsive child that I reared up. Selfish. Self-indulgent. Lazy. You have not changed at all.”

  “How dare you judge me,” I raged, “you who have enjoyed paradise while I suffered endless ages of loneliness and regret?”

  “You have enjoyed the adulation of nations,” Gan countered. “You have had more lovers than I could ever count. Were your seed not sterile, you could have populated the earth ten times over by now. If you were ever lonely, it was because you chose to be lonely. You wallow in self-pity for the same reason the pig wallows in mud. Because you take pleasure in it.”

  I felt myself tearing up. I did not wish to fight with my father. I loved him. I wanted his approval. I wanted to embrace him.

  “What else must I do before I am admitted to paradise?” I pleaded. “What other tasks must I complete? What have I done that merits this punishment?”

  “You have done what you have always done, my son… put your satisfaction before the well-being of the tribe,” Gan said. “Taken the easy way out. Shirked your responsibilities.”

  “I am finished!” I wailed. “I am old and I am tired and I have had enough of these concerns!”

  Gan’s eyes flashed dangerously. “We are never finished!” he shouted back. “We are born into debt, you lazy boy, and it is a debt that can never be paid in full. Not in thirty thousand years. Not even in a hundred thousand years! You owe us, Gon. For every drop of sweat your ancestors shed. For the lives they sacrificed so that you might have your time in the sun. For your very existence! And the price is your unceasing vigilance. Your duty is your descendants. Your duty is our descendants. A good man does not put his pleasure before the tribe. He does not eat when his children go hungry. He does not rest while his offspring labor. And he does not die until he has expended every last ounce of his strength to ensure the prosperity of his earthly bloodline.”

  I stared at him in mute horror as the implications of his admonition sank into my brain.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head in denial. “It is too much!”

  “Not for you,” Gan said.

  “It is not fair!”

  “Who said life was fair?”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re not an immortal.”

  “I paid my life debt, or have you forgotten? I honored our ancestors to my final breath.”

  Yes, he had. The memory of his death was still burned into my brain. Even now, some thirty thousand years later, I could picture it as if it happened yesterday. My father had fallen at the cave of the Gray Stone People. We had gone there to destroy the creature that was tormenting our Fat Hand neighbors. Instead, my maker and his twisted little sycophant had hunted us down, slew nearly every member of our war party. Only Brulde and my uncle Kort-Lenthe had survived. The Foul One had struck my father’s head from his shoulders. My father was old by then, fat and gray headed, but he had died a warrior, defending our tribe from a threat whose powers were beyond our comprehension.

  I saw an out then and seized desperately upon it.

  “Even if I wanted to go back, it is far too late for that now,” I said. “I am dead, father. My selfish plan succeeded. Lukas possesses my Living Blood. He has utterly destroyed my physical form. There is nothing left of me. Just dust and a few brittle shards of bone. And even that has been carried away by the wind by now. You are right, father, as always, but your wisdom can bear no fruit. Not this time.”

  “It is not too late,” Gan insisted. “You may yet pick up your burden of care.”

  “It is impossible! Not even an Eternal can survive such a trauma. It is how we destroyed the God King. How all Eternals are destroyed. It is over, father. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it is finished.”

  Gan shook his head, then uncrossed his arms to gesture toward my abdomen. “There is a way.”

  I looked down where he was pointing. To my dismay, I saw the throbbing umbilicus I had imagined just before I perished. It was a glistening black cord about half the width of my wrist. It sprouted from my navel and curved tautly back behind me. Even as I examined it, I could feel it tugging at me, trying to pull me back to the land of living men. And I understood, standing there in the presence of my father, my creator, just what exactly that glistening cord was, and how it should be that I was still connected to the blood drinker I had allowed to destroy me.

  “It is the Blood,” my father said.

  It was the Living Blood.

  My Blood!

  “You, in your folly, have unleashed a monster upon the world,” Gan said. “In your selfishness, you did not stop to consider the ramifications of what it was you planned to do.”

  I shook my
head in stubborn denial. “Zenzele will destroy him, or one of my children,” I said. “He is hopelessly outnumbered. Reckless and overconfident. They have powers he does not understand. That was always part of the plan. He would kill me, and then Zenzele or some other Elder would destroy him, before he got the chance to cause too much mischief.”

  As I spoke I yanked experimentally at the umbilicus linking me to the living world. It was cold and greasy to the touch and throbbed obscenely in my hands. I would have ripped it desperately from my belly but the slightest disturbance of the fleshy organelle sent such a shock of pain and disorientation through me that I could not bear the thought of doing violence to the thing.

  “Lukas is a new thing,” Gan said. “He is like no other vampire the world has ever seen. He has your Blood. He draws strength from it. In time, he will be like you, a true immortal, and when he kills again, when he drinks the Blood of another immortal being, he will take their strength, and any strange gifts they might be possessed of. The Far Sight. The Mind Gift. The Gift of Future Sight. He knows not yet that he possesses this power, but when he discovers it…”

  I finished it for him: “He will hunt down our kind, and take their powers through the Blood.”

  Was it true? Did Lukas possess such a gift, some strange power that I, in my self-absorbed state, did overlook? I knew he was powerful, yes. All my vampire children were gifted in some fashion or another. Nora was telepathic. Justus had visions of the future. Even Apollonius, who possessed no psychic powers, was blessed with unrivaled beauty and physical resilience. It was a thing I often took for granted, and a risk that I ignored when I granted my new fledgling the gift of my immortal Blood.

  Careless!

  Always so careless!

  I thought of the other strange talents my vampire brethren possessed. I knew of a vampire in Venice who could inflict physical injury by will alone. There was another in Russia who could cause objects to move without physically touching them. There were vampires who could control the minds of others, who could touch objects and see their pasts or their futures.

  What other strange gifts did my vampire brothers possess? And what would Lukas make of them when he realized he had the power to steal those abilities?

  He would set about the world, hunting down those vampires, one by one, and collecting their powers.

  How long until he was unstoppable?

  How long until he fashioned himself the new God King of the Vampires?

  And I had unleashed this fiend upon the world!

  “Tell me what to do, father!” I pleaded. “I have to put this right before it is too late!”

  “Your Blood still resides within the monster’s veins,” Gan said. “He has not yet… fully digested you.”

  I had Shared with countless vampires over the ages. On many occasions, the Blood had belonged to one of my enemies. There was always a little revolt inside my mind when I took the Blood of an enemy, as the imprint of their personality tries to usurp control. It is always like that. A little battle before the Blood is fully digested. Before the memories and personality are completely absorbed and the host personality asserts its dominance. I had never heard of a vampire being fully possessed by a Shared persona, but perhaps it could be done. It must be done! I had to find a way.

  For the world, and for the sake of my soul!

  “How do I do it?” I asked my father.

  He nodded once more to the throbbing cord in my hands, which was really just a psychic manifestation of the link I shared with my executioner.

  “Follow it back,” he said. “Use your connection to defeat your foe. He is a powerful blood drinker, yes, but you, my son, are the Oldest Living Vampire. Follow it back and defend your tribe!”

  6

  I looked once more into the cave, at my loved ones dancing in the light, my heart aching for them. Brulde, Eyya, Nyala. Oh, Ancestors, how I wanted to go to them! Sweep them into my arms, all three of them, and smother them in laughing kisses. Be with them forever.

  And then I let them go.

  With a neck-snapping jerk, I was hauled into the darkness. My father shot from sight as if he had been fired from a cannon. The light shrank to a candle flame, and then to a distant glinting star, and then it vanished altogether.

  Gone again!

  I raged. I railed at the caprices of fate. But what good does that ever do? I had orchestrated this entire fiasco. My father was right. I was a self-indulgent fool, and I had no one to blame but myself. I only hoped I could stop the monster I had created before he harmed the ones I loved.

  My family.

  My tribe.

  The umbilicus dragged me through the void at a blistering pace. So rapid was my movement that my arms and legs trailed out behind me, and it was a great effort to bring my hands forward and grab onto the cord. Gritting my teeth, I pulled myself up. I tilted back my head. I wanted to see what I was flying toward. I wanted to be ready for the battle that was coming.

  Darkness. Just darkness.

  And then… a diffuse light appeared ahead, grim and colorless. I heard in my mind a sort of gleeful gibbering, the babbling of a madman. It swelled in volume as I dived into the haze. I was buffeted by soundless winds. I felt cold and hungry.

  Faster now and faster, I fell through the haze.

  I added my resolve to the force that was dragging me through the void, willing myself onwards. I felt my speed increase. I was hurtling now, a comet cutting through the immeasurable gulf between the stars.

  Teeth clenched, eyes narrowed in determination, I flew into that cold, gray, loveless light.

  I had the impression of a great distorted white face, fanged mouth agape with outrage or surprise, and then I flew past it.

  Up into the light.

  Up into the world.

  There was a brilliant flash of light, as with the birth of the universe. I recoiled from it with a cry. When I opened my eyes, I saw that I was standing on the white wooded mountainside where I had gone to die. I was looking through the eyes of my executioner, through Lukas’s eyes, and kneeling at my feet, howling in agony, was my immortal lover Justus. My thumbs were jammed to their full length inside his eye sockets.

  Lukas had blinded him, just as I ascended into his consciousness!

  His fingers were clamped around my wrists, and he was wriggling to and fro, trying in vain to get away from me. I felt the tension in Lukas’s arms and arrested their movement, preventing my fledgling from tearing off his head. If I had returned just an instant later, Lukas would have ripped poor Justus’s head right off his shoulders.

  I gaped down at my friend in horror and despair. Justus was not a powerful vampire. He would not be able to repair the damage to his eyes. I had prevented Lukas from taking his life, but there was nothing I could do about his sight, and it was all my fault. I had created this fiend, unleashed this Frankenstein’s monster on the world, and my beloved Justus had paid for my folly with his eyes.

  For a moment I stood paralyzed, my hands clenched around Justus’s skull. I could feel Lukas inside my head, inside our head, willing his limbs to finish their work.

  No! You will not do this!

  The muscles of Lukas’s arms began to quake, transfixed between our opposing commands, and then I won out. I jerked my hands away from my friend. My thumbs withdrew from Justus’s ruined eye sockets with a wet sucking sound, and the Benedictine slumped back with an agonized yelp, collapsing onto the ground at my feet. Sobbing, blood pouring down his cheeks, Justus scrambled away from me, head swiveling blindly to and fro.

  Who else? I wondered frantically. Who else has Lukas harmed?

  I tried but was unable to gain access to his memories. I could not ascertain what had transpired while I was gone. He was only now becoming aware of my presence, and what it was I intended to do.

  Blood possession!

  I have ingested the Living Blood of countless vampires over the millennia, including the blood of the father of us all, the God King Kronos. I have Shared thei
r thoughts, lived their lives, maybe even picked up a few of their personality traits. A dollop of Zenzele’s hot temper. A pinch of Paulo’s stubbornness. Only a handful of those psyches had tried to take control. Khronos had, of course, and the Eternal Yul, when I was Divided and availed myself of his body. But none had ever succeeded. None had ever managed to subjugate my will. Now we would see if I could do it, if I could take possession of my dangerous acolyte!

  Lukas had yet to fully digest my Blood. It was too old, too powerful. It was why my mind stood apart from his, why I was able to wrest control of his physical form, if only for an instant. Perhaps I could hold him long enough for Zenzele or one of the others to destroy him, protect my tribe one final time. It would be my destruction—again!—but I would not let him hurt anyone else.

  Maybe then, once I had atoned for my selfishness, Gan would grant me entry to the Ghost World of my ancestors, and to the glory of lost lovers’ embrace.

  !!!GET OUT!!!

  I reeled as Lukas’s voice boomed inside my consciousness. He had recovered from his surprise, figured out just what it was I meant to do to him.

  I felt imaginary hands clamp around my throat. His face, blurred and indistinct, occulted my vision, eyes and mouth exaggeratedly large, a monstrous parody of the man.

  WE HAD A DEAL! I KEPT MY END OF THE BARGAIN! NOW YOU KEEP YOURS! LIE DOWN AND DIE!

  I fired back at him, speaking to him mind-to-mind: Sorry, enfant, seems I’ve had a change of heart.

  YOU’RE DEAD! I KILLED YOU!

  I’ve been dead for thirty thousand years.